Is the F.B.I. Truly Biased Against Trump? ( www.newyorker.com )

pecial Agent Johnathan Buma, of the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, holds a unique perspective on the origin of two interconnected political scandals. A former biochemist who was trained in Russian by the agency, Buma has spent fifteen years cultivating human sources in investigations of money laundering, public corruption, and foreign attempts to influence elections. In January, 2019, information from one of Buma’s sources set in motion the Bureau’s first inquiries into potential undisclosed lobbying and tax evasion by Hunter Biden—President Joe Biden’s son and, at the time, a director of the Ukrainian company Burisma. Buma also played a pivotal role in a Bureau investigation into possibly illegal foreign-lobbying activity and campaign-finance violations by Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, who oversaw a sprawling effort to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian ties.

Earlier this year, Buma watched with keen interest as the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee geared up for public hearings into the Biden Administration’s alleged political “weaponizing” of the F.B.I. The Republicans claimed that the Bureau had relentlessly pursued former President Trump and his allies while neglecting leads about the Bidens. (In January, Representative Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who chairs the committee, complained on “Meet the Press” that, although agents had “raided Trump’s home,” they hadn’t “raided Biden’s home.”) In April, Buma reached out to Jordan’s office, offering public testimony as a whistle-blower. He later gave a detailed phone interview to two former federal agents whom the committee had hired to investigate what its conservative members call “the Biden family business.”